


Feeling

by Quicksilvermaid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Emotions, M/M, Repression, Tears and pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 15:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20780942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quicksilvermaid/pseuds/Quicksilvermaid
Summary: Harry never learned to cry.





	Feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tackytiger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tackytiger/gifts).

> If you're reading this I would highly recommend checking out the delicious work of [Tackytiger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tackytiger/pseuds/tackytiger/works) to whom this sadness is gifted. 
> 
> Take You Made is an incredibly hot starting point 😍🔥
> 
> Seriously, she's brilliant and her descriptions make me want to cry. Check her out ☺️

He never learned to cry. Or maybe he knew how, once, when he was little. But there's only so much crying you can do alone - only so often you can call for help or comfort or love and have it go unheard, before you learn to stop calling. 

'Emotional repression,' his therapist called it. Survival, Harry called it. Grief hurt less when you didn't let yourself feel it. He never cried for Sirius. He raged and yelled and hated and fought. But he never cried. 

He tries to tell himself now, that he needs to fight back against the helplessness that stands in front of him like a chasm, but all he feels is numb. 

Draco walked out on him. Draco told him he was sick of trying to make Harry _feel_.

But Harry _does_ feel when he's with Draco. He feels so much that it scares him. He doesn't know what to do with it, so he falls back on what he knows. 

He hides it and protects it and keeps it just for him. Feelings are safer that way. 

But now his feelings aren't safe. They're fear and loss and loneliness and inadequacy. All he can see is the pain in Draco's eyes as he'd closed the door behind him. The way he'd begged Harry with his gaze to stop him. The way Harry had stood there, frozen, unable to process the maelstrom of emotions churning through him. 

He can't even tell what he feels now, the ache inside that keeps growing. It doesn't stop until he hears the door open again, hours later. He standing in the same place when Draco walks back in.

'I thought you left me,' Harry says, and his throat burns with how much that thought had hurt him.

'I'm back now,' Draco says, and his voice is thick with emotion, with frustration and sadness and something Harry dares to hope is still love. 

He takes a step closer and pulls Harry to himself and Harry lets himself be held, lets himself drown in Draco's touch. If only he could have this, always. 

'You're going to have to work harder than that, to get rid of me, Potter,' Draco says, his voice muffled against Harry's neck as he turns his head, pressing a kiss against the skin there. 

Harry laughs, just a tiny sound. It breaks half way. And then it's a sob. It's almost ripped from him, the burning in his throat growing. He feels choked with the emotions rushing through him. Relief, love, regret and always the undercurrent of fear, that he could lose this too - that Draco would be taken from him like so much else. 

Harry takes in a deep breath and it shakes. He closes his eyes, feeling a pricking heat behind them.  
'I'll always come back,' Draco says, and it's this thought, this promise, that breaks him at last. 

Harry lets out a sound that's twenty three years of pain wrapped up into one and he buries his face in the soft wool of Draco's jumper. 

Draco presses another kiss against his skin and Harry sobs again, as he feels the first of the tears slip from beneath his lids. 

Draco holds him as he cries.


End file.
